“Adrift” series, “Adrift 4” (2025), monoprint, ink on Rives BFK, 22 x 30″
The personal and the universal collide in the works of May Tveit. Her corrugated cardboard sculptures, prints and assemblages all carry a connection to the physicality of the body while also hinting at energy flows that transcend material boundaries. Trained in industrial design and descending from a family with roots in carpentry, Tveit has a strong affinity for geometric objects and a deep interest in the aesthetics of mundane materials.
While visually enrapturing through labyrinthine configurations and vibratory patterns, her works also have firm conceptual foundations. A walk into Tveit’s studio reveals a careful mapping of connections between bodily, environmental and political systems. Neatly lined up on a wall, one can see domestic utensils, photographs of architectural spaces, a picture of a Matryoshka doll, bundles of strings sprawling in the air, tree branches, a diamond-shaped mirror and inspiring quotes such as astronomer Carl Sagan’s invitation to consider the modest space occupied by humans in the vastness of the cosmos. Through such arrangements of artifacts, Tveit ponders the interconnections between the personal and the social.
Tveit’s works have a lot in common both with the rigor of geometric abstraction tendencies such as Suprematism and Minimalism and with the approachability of Pop Art and DIY projects. She ingeniously uses cardboard, tape, rope, plastic foil and metal in the making of objects and images that allude to ongoing processes of material and psychic transformation. “I want to build prints in the manner that I am building sculptures,” states Tveit.
The Kansas City public is best familiar with her “Universal Boxes” shown at the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art in 2017 and her “Drop Unit” sculptures displayed at the Greenlease Gallery in 2019. Made of corrugated cardboard, both sets of works are inspired by the time Tveit spent in residence at the Lawrence Paper Company. The former are the result of cutting and stacking cardboard box templates into symmetrical structures reminiscent of ancient monuments. By contrast, the latter evoke abysmal spaces from another galaxy and are formed through the meticulous gluing together of cardboard sheets into the shape of the “drop” — the material discarded after the manufacturing of an object. These separate series of works represent two significant poles of Tveit’s practice, being based on the height of her body and her inquiry into how we give shape to spaces while being concomitantly shaped by them.
This exploration is also manifest in Tveit’s recent exhibition at the Volland Foundation, which presented one of her majestic “Universal Boxes” in conjunction with monoprints and small-scale assemblages building on the tension between holding onto one’s desires and letting go of them. Tveit’s careful placement of stones wrapped in string onto small box templates brings to mind caring and healing gestures. Their intimacy complements the journeys into expanded states of consciousness suggested by her “Beacon Being” monoprints. The imprints of universal boxes at the center of them stand out as geometric resonators of pulsating energy fields.
Tveit is currently experimenting with multiple printmaking techniques, including chine collé, engraving and woodblock printing. She is keen on making evident the transfer of recognizable material patterns such as undulating ropes in her dreamy “Adrift” woodblock prints. Some of these indexical traces underscore the plasticity of minds and bodies, others point to self- or socially imposed rules, as seen in her “Alignment” woodblock prints based on the format of yellow legal pads. Irrespective of their medium, Tveit’s works display material and social contingencies one needs to face in the search for structuring and transforming the self. In the artist’s words, “different doors and windows open up depending on where you are in life.” One just needs to keep looking for them.
For more information, www.maytveit.com.
All images courtesy of the artist
Photos by E.G. Schempf
